President Obama is one piece of the
puzzle when it comes to tackling climate change, but he's a very important
piece. This letter lays out exactly the kind of leadership we need from
him in the coming 4 years.It calls for a
rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline (the first and maybe simplest test of his
seriousness on climate), a strong carbon rule that would address pollution from
existing coal plants, and a number of other things which will need his
attention right away.

The letter was written by our friends at
CREDO, and the full text is below. In these early moments of Obama's
second term, it's important that we are vocal about our high expectations. The
more people who sign on, the louder our message will be.

We'll deliver this letter in bulk a few days
before our big action in DC on February 17th, and I hope to have your name
alongside mine when we do.

Thanks again, Bill

Dear President Obama,

It was with great relief and gratitude that
we welcomed, at long last, a clarion call in your inaugural address to
"respond to the threat of climate change" -- the greatest threat,
challenge, and opportunity of our time.

We thank you for these words, because
your words are powerful, and necessary for change. But words are not enough. We
need action.

Mr. President, you are the first leader in
our history who will be judged by what you do -- or do not do -- to protect
your people from the already-begun ravages and disruptions brought about by
fossil fuels.

So far, Mr. President, you are failing in
the face of our earth heating up, and the damage accelerating.

Just a few months ago, we witnessed New York and New
Jersey swallowed up by our still-rising oceans. Our
worsening nationwide drought, after the hottest year on record, is clear
evidence that our planet is not healing, but is hurtling toward greater climate
disruption.

The simple truth is that you will continue
failing in the fight against climate change, as long as you continue an energy
policy which treats equally the fuels that are hurting us and those that will
save us. To meet your call on
climate change, your "all of the above" energy policy must end.

Your support for fracking and drilling, coal
mines and pipelines, continues to obliterate the progress you could be making
with your administration's gas mileage rule, or your investments in renewable
energy. Even if you finally issue a carbon pollution rule that addresses
existing sources of pollution, it
will mean nothing if you are simultaneously lighting the fuses on carbon bombs
by approving the Keystone XL pipeline, Arctic drilling, or fossil fuel export
projects.

You must use the power of your office and
our federal lands to stop promoting fossil fuel development, and reject these
projects outright.

While we recognize that a majority in the
House of Representatives are clearly not on the side of science or sanity, you
can and must find a way - within Congress or the power of your office - to end
fossil fuel subsidies and giveaways, and put a price on all greenhouse gas
pollution, so that fossil fuel executives can no longer get rich from the
destabilization of our climate, and so fossil-free energy can thrive. If Congress remains in the way, you must fight to
change Congress.

You must invest significantly in sustainable
sources of energy as part of a plan to rapidly transition our nation from
fossil fuels. And these efforts should be coupled with resources to help our
cities, states and industries prepare for the damage that climate change is
already bringing. (The $50 billion Sandy
relief package and the drought's impacts on food prices are just two painful
reminders that the cost of inaction is enormous, and untenable.)

Confronting climate change also happens to
be our best opportunity to create the broad-based economic revitalization that
your policies have largely failed to achieve. This is not simply an empty trope
of idealistic environmentalists, it is the truth.

Mr. President, we are urging you to
do as our other Illinois president did when confronted with the great moral
issue of his time: to take bold, decisive action to end one great societal ill,
changing the economy in the process, and usher in a new era of American
freedom, security and prosperity.

This is the moment. We will support you. But
you must lead and take action, starting first and foremost with your rejection
of the presidential permit required by the Keystone XL pipeline, which is your
decision and yours alone.

President Obama and the Democrats need a new peace initiative to
increase turnout and voting by pro-peace voters who will make a critical
difference in this November's election.

The president
has already recognized the importance of this constituency. In every speech he
points to winding down the Iraq War and the Afghanistan quagmire as among his achievements.
The savings, he also notes, are billions of tax dollars that should be invested
in his mission of rebuilding America.

Why is a further initiative needed, when
everyone agrees that the economy and character issues are the most important in
voters' minds?

Because many
pro-peace voters have been disillusioned by the president's unilateral
escalation of drone attacks in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere; the
lack of transparency around those drone attacks; secret military interventions
in many countries under the banner of counterterrorism; the assertion of
executive control over interventions like Libya; the approval of assassinations
and cyber-war measures under the sole approval of the president; and the
shrinking of civil liberties and Congressional checks and balances in this new
era of warfare. A decision on the US
and/or Israel attacking Iran
may be imminent but who would know? The War Powers Act does not apply unless
there is "sustained fighting" by American "ground troops."

In doing what
they believe is necessary to protect US interests, the president and many
Democrats have deflated their base among pro-peace and progressive voters. To
expect that those voters will return to 2008-levels of enthusiasm, or turn out
at 2008 levels of participation, is mistaken.

These voters
are not undecided between Obama and Romney. They are undecided about whether to
vote at all, or to cast a protest vote for the Greens. . . .

If it is not
enough to campaign on claims of winding down two wars, what more is needed?

One
possibility is for the president to recognize, without having to backtrack,
that his policies have opened a new era of warfare that renders the 1973 War
Powers Act all but obsolete. He can be an effective Commander-In-Chief while
disavowing a return to an Imperial Presidency.

The proposal
need not be a detailed blueprint, partly because the subject is complex. But
the president can pledge to start a conversation about how to enhance the
democratic rule of law, the constitutional role of Congressional oversight and
consent, and a broader, re-invigorated place for the media and civil society in
the process of deciding whether, when, and for how long America goes to war.

However much
Obama extols his Libyan policy, he should remember how close he came to
rejection by a bipartisan coalition in the House, and how he was forced to
conceal internal administration memos questioning the legality of that policy.
He and his team should remember how difficult it was to maintain that the War
Powers Act did not apply to Libya,
because, they claimed, there were no American ground troops, no "sustained
fighting,” no "active" exchange of fire, and so on. More Libyas
are on the horizon, or perhaps already in the works.

A
future-oriented promise of reconsidering and updating the War Powers Act would make pro-peace voters see a new
hope and new agenda for an Obama second term, thus spurring their turnout.
There is no downside to such a pledge. If he needs a rationale, Obama can
simply say that his policies have opened a new chapter of warfare that requires
an expansion of the law. Romney, the media, and the Pentagon are not likely to
advocate for the expansion of executive power, a new McCarthyism or a return to
the Nixon era.

Some next
steps might include:

A plank in the Democratic platform, although time is
short to include one;

Consensus support from the Congressional Progressive
Caucus, who would hold forums to develop the proposal, and emphasize it in
their fall campaigns;

Convening of a task force of civil libertarians and
lawyers working on detention and torture issues, to solicit their
recommendations;

Convening a conversation with mainstream media
advocates concerned with the erosion of First Amendment protections;

Convening clergy to increase input on the moral
dimensions of the new warfare.

If enough
voices declare that a stronger vision of peace is needed, anything can happen
in the course of this election. John F. Kennedy's advisers did not want him to
announce the Peace Corp in October 1960, but he did so in response to a student
movement. JFK also called Coretta Scott
King when her husband Martin was in jail. Looking back, those gestures were
history-turning events.

A call by this
president to expand the War Powers Act
and avert any return to the Imperial Presidency might have the same ripple

Let us
review. Barack Obama, who was lifted to the presidency four years ago on a
great wave of progressive fantasy, likes to say that the national budget is
like a family budget: that when times are tough, government has to tighten its
belt. This is a Republican simile of very long standing, and the president is a
Democrat. He is in fact the leader of the party that is supposed to believe in
deficit spending during hard times. Yet Obama has enthusiastically adopted the
belt-tightening trope, and all the terrible ideas that go with it. Another
thing the president …http://harpers.org/archive/2012/09/compromising-positions/

“The
Changeling: The content of Obama’s character”

Download Pdf ARTICLE— From the September 2012 issue of HARPER’S MAGAZINE

MicroFicheWho knows but that,
on the lower frequencies, he speaks for me, for you, for all of us? An
educated, intelligent man, he is the
very model of the roommate that every good liberal parent in Park Slope or Santa Monica prays that
their son might bring home from college. He is proof of how it is possible to
live the good life in America
without ceasing to be a good person. Intimately acquainted with ambivalence, he
pulled the trigger on Osama bin Laden while bringing our boys home from the
deserts of Iraq.
The quasi-accidental father of quasi-universal health …http://harpers.org/archive/2012/09/the-changeling-2/

Glenn Greenwald: Oppose assassination and secrecy for
unaccountable power

JustForeignPolicy, 7-12-12.
The notion that we should trust the President with secret and
unaccountable power to kill runs completely contrary to the spirit of the
Constitution.

Junod writes: "Sure, we as a nation have always killed
people. A lot of people. [Dick: See
books by William Blum and OMNI’s many related Newsletters.] But no president has ever waged war by
killing enemies one by one, targeting them individually for execution, wherever
they are. The Obama administration has taken pains to tell us, over and over
again, that they are careful, scrupulous of our laws, and determined to avoid
the loss of collateral, innocent lives. They're careful because when it comes
to waging war on individuals, the distinction between war and murder becomes a
fine one."

READ MORE

The Book of Obama: From Hope and Change to the Age of RevoltByTed
Rall

How did a charismatic young
president elected in an atmosphere of optimism and expectation lead the United States
to the brink of revolution? From a chance encounter in the early 1980s to the
Democratic primaries of 2007-08, syndicated columnist and political cartoonist
Ted Rall was one of the first to size up Barack Obama as we know him now:
conservative, risk-averse and tonedeaf. In The Book of Obama Rall
revisits the rapid rise and dizzying fall of Obama--and the emergence of the
Tea Party and Occupy movements--and draws a startling conclusion: We the People
weren't lied to. We lied to ourselves, both about Obama and the two-party
system. We voted when

Written early in 2010 and initially published in
September 2010, The
Obama Syndrome predicted the Obama administration’s historic
midterm defeat. But unlike myriad commentators who have since pinned
responsibility for that Democratic Party collapse on the “reform” president’s
lack of firm resolve, Ali’s critique located the problem in Obama’s notion of
reform itself. Barack Obama campaigned for the presidency by promising to
escalate the war in Afghanistan,
and his economic team brought the architects of the financial crisis into the
White House. Small wonder then that the “War on Terror”—torture in Bagram,
occupation in Iraq,
appeasement in Israel, and
escalation in Pakistan—continues.
And that Wall Street and the country’s biggest corporations have all profited
at the expense of America’s
working class and poor.

Now a thoroughly updated paperback continues the story through the midterms,
including a trenchant analysis of the Tea Party, and Obama’s decision to
continue with his predecessor’s tax cuts for the rich. Ali asks whether—in the
absence of a progressive upheaval from below—US politics is permanently mired in
moderate Republicanism. Already called “a comprehensive account” of the
problems with Obama (The Huffington Post), this new edition is sure to
provide a more “powerful boost to Obama dissenters on the left” (Pittsburgh

Chris Hedges, Criminalizing Dissent

Truthdig, August 13, 2012, RSN

Hedges writes:
"Barack Obama's administration has appealed Judge Forrest's temporary
injunction and would certainly appeal a permanent injunction. It is a stunning admission
by this president that he will do nothing to protect our constitutional
rights."

What
It Means to Be a Democrat, byGeorge McGovern

A call to arms by the former
presidential candidate that combines personal anecdotes and cultural critiques
to remind liberals of their ideological compass and restore confidence.

George McGovern has been a leading
figure of the Democratic Party for more than fifty years. From this true
liberal comes a thoughtful examination of what being a Democrat really means.
McGovern admonishes current Democratic politicians for losing sight of their
ideals as they subscribe to an increasingly centrist policy agenda. Applying
his wide- ranging knowledge and expertise on issues ranging from military
spending to same-sex marriage to educational reform, he stresses the importance
of creating policies we can be proud of. Finally, with 2012 looming, McGovern's
What It Means to Be a Democrat offers a vision of the Party's future in
which ideological coherence

US & World

The robotic planes
more commonly referred to asdroneshave gone from a secret, rarely
covered military and CIA program to a regular fixture on the national media as
well as technology websites.

As one of the
leaders behind the U.S.
drone program, White House adviser John Brennan, gets ready to face
confirmation hearings to head the CIA, drones have never been more in the
spotlight. Popular science showNOVAhopes to shed more light on
these flying bots with a documentary titled "Rise
of the Drones."

The documentary
will tackle both the military and civilian side of drone technology, exploring
how the military trains drone pilots at the Holloman Air Force base in New Mexico, as well as
the role drones will play in domestic law enforcement.

There are
controversies in both of these worlds. Are
drone strikes in accordance with international law? Are they killing too many civilians?
"We’ve entered an era where we’re conducting an array of operations using
unmanned systems that in a previous generation we would have called war, and we
would have treated like war," Peter W. Singer, an expert in the future of
warfare, says in the documentary. "When you’re conducting more than 300
air strikes in a country, you’re conducting an equivalent of at least an ‘Air
War’ campaign. But we don’t call it that now."

On the civilian
side, most of the questions are related to privacy and security. Can citizens' privacy be respected when
there are thousands of eyes in the sky? "I think anybody that can use
a device to peer into your activities even if it’s the air outside your window
or the air above your property, I think there is a right to privacy," Rep.
Rand Paul tellsNOVA. "The worry is that in two
[to] three years we will have 30,000 drones crisscrossing the sky accumulating
all this information."

In addition to
Singer and Paul, to try to answer all these questionsNOVAinterviewed
the "father" of the Predator drone, the most widely used killer drone
in the U.S. arsenal, several
drone pilots and Vijay Kumar, a University
of Pennsylvania
roboticist, particularly known for his studies in the control and coordination
of multi-robot formations.

Check out the
teaser trailer above to have an idea of what "Rise of the Drones" is
all about. The full documentary will air Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET onPBS

Glenn Greenwald: "A one-day attack on US soil eleven
years ago unleashed a never-ending campaign of violence around the world from
the target and its allies." Photograph: Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty

A vitally important and thoroughly
documentednew reporton
the impact of Obama's drone campaign has just been released by [JAMES CAVALLARO
AND OTHER] researchers at NYU School of Law and StanfordUniversityLawSchool.
Entitled "Living UnderDrones:
Death, Injury and Trauma to Civilians From US Drone Practices inPakistan", the report details the terrorizing
effects of Obama's drone assaults as well as the numerous, highly misleading
public statements from administration officials about that campaign. The
study's purpose was to conduct an "independent investigations into
whether, and to what extent, drone strikes in Pakistan conformed to international
law and caused harm and/or injury to civilians".

The report is "based on over 130
detailed interviews with victims and witnesses of drone activity, their family
members, current and former Pakistani government officials, representatives
from five major Pakistani political parties, subject matter experts, lawyers,
medical professionals, development and humanitarian workers, members of civil
society, academics, and journalists." Witnesses "provided first-handaccounts of drone strikes, and
provided testimony about a range of issues, including the missile strikes
themselves, the strike sites, the victims' bodies, or a family member or
members killed or injured in the strike".

Here is the powerful first three
paragraphs of the report, summarizing its main findings:

While
noting that it is difficult to obtain precise information on the number of
civilian deaths "because of US efforts to shield the drone program from
democratic accountability", the report nonetheless concludes: "while
civilian casualties are rarely acknowledged by the US
government, there is significant evidence that US drone strikes have injured and
killed civilians."

But beyond
body counts, there's the fact that "US drone strike policies cause
considerable and under-accounted for harm to the daily lives of ordinary
civilians, beyond death and physical injury":

In other
words, the people in the areas targeted by Obama's drone campaign are being
systematically terrorized. There's just no other word for it. It is a campaign
of terror - highly effective terror - regardless of what noble progressive
sentiments one wishes to believe reside in the heart of the leader ordering it.
And that's precisely why the report, to its great credit, uses that term to
describe the Obama policy: the drone campaign "terrorizes men, women, and
children".

Along the same lines, note that the report
confirms what had already beenpreviously documented: the Obama campaign's
despicable (and likely criminal) targeting of rescuers who arrive to provide
aid to the victims of the original strike. Noting that evenfunerals of drone victims have been targeted under Obama,
the report documents that the US
has "made family members afraid to attend funerals". The result of
this tactic is as predictable as it is heinous:

"Secondary
strikes have discouraged average civilians from coming to one another's rescue,
and even inhibited the provision of emergency medical assistance from
humanitarian workers."

In the hierarchy of war crimes, deliberately targeting rescuers and funerals -
so that aid workers are petrified to treat the wounded and family members are
intimidated out of mourning their loved ones - ranks rather high, to put that
mildly. Indeed, the US
itself haslong maintained that such "secondary
strikes" are a prime hallmark of some of the world's most despised terrorist
groups.

Perhaps
worst of all, the report details at length that the prime excuse offered by
Obama defenders for this continuous killing - it Keeps Us Safe™ by killing The
Terrorists™ - is dubious "at best"; indeed, the opposite is more
likely true:

All the way back in 2004, the Rumsfeld
Pentagon commissioned a study to determine the causes of anti-US terrorism, andeven
it concluded: "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather,
they hate our policies." Running around the world beating your chest,
bellowing "we're at war!", and bombing multiple Muslim countries does
not keep one safe. It manifestly does the opposite, since it ensures that even
the most rational people will calculate that targeting Americans with violence
in response is just and necessary to deter further aggression.

A one-day
attack on US
soil eleven years ago unleashed a never-ending campaign of violence around the
world from the target and its allies. Is it really a challenge to understand
that continuous bombings and civilian-killing assaults over many years, in many
Muslim countries, will generate the same desire for aggression and vengeance
against the US?

Time and again, those who have
attempted to perpetrate attacks on US soil have cited the Muslim
children and other innocent human beings extinguished by Obama's drones. Recallthe wordsof
the attempted Times Square bomber, Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, at his
sentencing hearing when the federal judge presiding over his case, Miriam
Goldman Cedarbaum, asked incredulously how he could possibly use violence that
he knew would result in the deaths even of innocent children -- as though she
were literally unaware that her own government continuously does exactly that:

"'Well,
the drone hits in Afghanistan
and Iraq,
they don't see children, they don't see anybody. They kill women, children,
they kill everybody. It's a war, and in war, they kill people. They're killing
all Muslims' . . . .

"'I am part of the answer to the U.S.
terrorizing the Muslim nations and the Muslim people. And, on behalf of that,
I'm avenging the attack. Living in theUnited
States, Americans only care about their own people, but they don't
care about the people elsewhere in the world when they die.'"

The minute he was apprehended by US
authorities, Shahzad, as reported by the Washington Post, "told
agents that he was motivated by opposition to U.S. policy in the Muslim world,
officials said. 'One of the first things he said was, 'How would you feel if
people attacked the United
States? You are attacking a sovereign Pakistan.'"

Perhaps most importantly, the report
documents the extreme levels of propaganda used by the western press to deceive
their citizens into believing pure myths about the drone campaign. As I'veargued before, the worst of these myths is the
journalistic mimicry of the term "militants" to describe drone
victims even when those outlets have no idea who was killed or whether that
term is accurate (indeed, the term itself is almost as ill-defined as
"terrorist"). This media practice became particularly inexcusable
after the New York Timesrevealed in Maythat "Mr. Obama embraced a
disputed method for counting civilian casualties that did little to box him in.
It in effectcounts all military-age males in a strike zone as
combatants."

Significantly, the report says the
prime culprit of these evils is what it calls the "dramatic
escalation" of the drone campaign by the 2009 Nobel Peace laureate -
escalated not just in sheer numbers (in less than four years, Obama "has
reportedly carried out more than five times" the number ordered by Bush in
eight years), but more so, the indiscriminate nature of the strikes. AsTuesday's Guardian articleon this report states: it "blames
the US
president, Barack Obama, for the escalation of 'signature strikes' in which
groups are selected merely through remote 'pattern of life' analysis."

The report is equally damning when
documenting the attempts of the Obama administration to suppress information
about its drone victims, and worse, to actively mislead when they deign
selectively to release information. Recognizing the difficulty of determining
the number of civilian deaths with exactitude - due to "the opaqueness of
the US
government about its targeted killing program" as well as the
inaccessibility of the region - it nonetheless documents that "the numbers
of civilians killed are undoubtedly far higher than the few claimed by US
officials." In other words, the administration's public statements are
false: "undoubtedly"
so. As the LA Timessummarizes the study's findings today:
"Far more civilians have been killed by U.S.
drone strikes in Pakistan's
tribal areas than U.S.
counter-terrorism officials have acknowledged."

(The report is particularly scathing
about the patent unreliability of the New America Foundation and its leading
drone-and-Obama cheerleader, Peter Bergen, also of CNN, who has beenamply rewarded with lucrative accessby the administration he dutifully
defends. Echoing arecent article by the Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorfand ananalysis from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism,
the report concludes that scrutiny of Bergen's key claims "has since
revealed omissions and inconsistencies inNew
America Foundation's dataset, calling its widely publicized conclusions into question."
It documents "several other glaring omissions from New America
Foundation's data" used to depict Obama's drone campaign as far more
benign than it actually is.)

Finally,
the report notes the threat to democratic accountability posed by the Obama administration's
refusal to allow any transparency or judicial oversight regarding who the
president orders killed: "The opaque position of the US government
on civilian casualties is also emblematic of an accountability and democratic
vacuum." In that regard, the report - as its final paragraph - quotes the
question I have often asked about this state of affairs, an answer to which I
have never heard from Obama's drone defenders:

"'If the president has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on American citizens
without a warrant, imprison American citizens on his own declaration, kidnap
and torture, then what can't he do?'"

What has always amazed me about that is
that, there, Gore was merely decrying Bush's mere eavesdropping on Americans
and his detention of them without judicial review. Yet here Obama is claiming
the power to decide who should bekilledwithout
a shred of transparency, oversight, or due process - a power that is being
continuously used to kill civilians, including children - and many of thesesameprogressivesnowactually cheerfor that.Democrats spent several days
at their convention two weeks agowildly cheering and chantingwhenever President Obama's use of
violence and force was heralded. They're celebrating a leader who is
terrorizing several parts of the Muslim world, repeatedly killing children,
targeting rescuers and mourners, and entrenching the authority to exert the
most extreme powers in full secrecy and without any accountability -- all while
he increases, not decreases, the likelihood of future attacks. This new
Stanford/NYU report is but the latest in a long line of evidence proving all of
that.

Telling the truth for 30 years...

Nav view search

Navigation

January/February 2013,
Pages 34-35

Special Report

Assassination Drones: A New Type of Warfare

By Pam Bailey

"Death, destruction, disease,
horror. That's what war is all about, Anon. That's what makes it a thing to be
avoided. [But] you've made it neat and painless. So neat and painless, you've
had no reason to stop it."—Captain Kirk, "Star Trek"

Warfare used to be an emotional, messy,
painful exercise no matter which side you were on. The inevitability of death
and destruction for the aggressor as well as the "targets" provided a
strong incentive to end any war. But drones (also known as UAVs, or unmanned
aerial vehicles) make waging war physically and emotionally painless for those
who deploy them. This has enormous consequences for Americans, who must foot
the bill as well as bear the consequences of the inevitable anti-U.S. backlash.
But even more serious are the ramifications for the citizens on the
"receiving end," whose own governments may or may not be complicit.

In October of 2012, CODEPINK: Women for Peace organized a delegation
to Pakistan, the country most in the "crosshairs" of the CIA's drone
force, to protest what it considers an immoral and illegal expansion of
traditional warfare; stand in solidarity with the families who have become
"collateral damage"; and learn more about a country that few
Americans understand, even as our government wages a virtual war against it.
However, the issues at hand are just as applicable to the Gaza Strip (where U.S. ally Israel
uses the same technology to target Palestinians), Yemen,
Somalia
and a growing list of other countries.

Controlled remotely by "pilots" thousands of miles
away, drones are used both to kill and for surveillance—keeping constant watch
over a targeted community. Even the seemingly more benign surveillance has a
deeply damaging psychological impact. One Pakistani father of three who is
raising his family in Waziristan, the tribal
territory most targeted by the CIA for suspected terrorist activity, explained
it this way: "Drones are always on my mind. It makes it difficult to
sleep. They are like a mosquito. Even when you don't see them, you can hear
them, you know they are there."

InLiving Under Drones,a report produced by the Stanford
International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic, psychiatrists call
this pervasive worry common to conflict zones "anticipatory anxiety."
People are constantly worrying, "when is the next drone attack going to
happen?" When they hear the sound of a drone, they run to seek shelter.

Despite these insidious effects, the U.S. government
increasingly is turning to drones as a way to continue intervening at will in
"trouble zones," while appeasing a war-weary American public. A May
2012 AP/GfK poll found that 66 percent of Americans are weary of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq,
and want U.S.
troops home. Drones are offered as the ideal solution: fewer American
"boots on the ground." This means that, increasingly, the human cost
is mostly one-sided, with victims' deaths and injuries not even counted by the U.S. government
(that's a job left to NGOs). In 2002, the U.S. drone fleet numbered only 167.
Today, reports theChristian Science Monitor,it has expanded to more
than 7,000—and that number is set to increase. As stated in the Oct. 18Washington
Post,"the
CIA is urging the White House to approve a significant expansion of the
agency's fleet of armed drones, a move that would extend the spy service's
decade-long transformation into a paramilitary force. The outcome has broad
implications for counterterrorism policy and whether the CIA gradually returns
to an organization focused mainly on gathering intelligence, or remains a
central player in the targeted killing of terrorism suspects abroad."

Just what is wrong with that? Consider:

§The
definition and targeting of "terrorists" are alarmingly ambiguous and
arbitrary.

§Drones
aren't as precise as they have been advertised; civilians are increasingly
"collateral damage."

§The
result: "blowback"—a lesson we should have learned when we funded themujahedeento fight the Soviets in Afghanistan,
only to have them turn against us. Drone strikes are a recruiting tool for the
Taliban.

§Drone
attacks undermine what little respect remains for international law.

And just whom are we really killing?

Increasingly, drone attacks in Pakistan and
elsewhere are impersonally described as "signature" strikes; in other
words, "patterns of life" are targeted rather than specific
individuals. For example, in his article, "One Hell of a Killing Machine:
Signature Strikes and International Law," published in the OctoberJournal
of International Criminal Justice,Kevin Heller of the
Melbourne Law School wrote: "Multiple media reports indicate that the U.S.
considers all 'military-age males in a strike zone' to be justified drone
targets, because 'simple logic' indicates that 'people in an area of known
terrorist activity...are probably up to no good.'"

In the vast majority of strikes today, the identity of the
individuals targeted isn't known. As a result, reports Reuters, of the 500
"militants" killed by drones between 2008 and 2010, only 8 percent
have been confirmed to be mid- to top-tier organizers or leaders.

"If they think specific people have done something wrong,
arrest them and bring them to court. That is a basic right you give to your own
people," said Karim Khan, a Pakistani journalist whose compound was
destroyed by a Hellfire missile from an American drone on Dec. 24, 2009.

Only three persons were in Khan's compound when the drone fired
six Hellfire missiles: a mason who was building a mosque nearby, Khan's
16-year-old son and his younger brother, who worked as a teacher and believed
education was more powerful than the gun. Instead, the drones taught his
students hatred. Although Washington
announced shortly after the strike on Khan's compound that a "militant
target" named Al Juma had been killed, no one by that name was present.
Several months later, yet another strike allegedly killed the same man. "I
think actually he is still alive today," Khan said with graveyard humor.

Between June 2004 and September 2012, reports the Bureau of
Investigative Journalism, the U.S.
has unleashed 346 drone attacks on Pakistan—292 of which were approved
by President Barack Obama. Of the 2,562 to 3,325 people killed, 474 to 881 (176
of them children) have now been confirmed to be civilians.

Blowback: Reaping What
We Sow

The PewResearchCenter
reported in June of 2012 that 74 percent of Pakistanis now consider the U.S. an enemy.

"I interviewed young children from Waziristan and
surrounding areas, all under the age of 21, who were being questioned by
Pakistani authorities for having links with extremist organizations, including
Taliban factions," Anum Abbasi, an associate with the Research Society of
International Law (RSIL) in Islamabad, told the CODEPINK delegation. "What
became clear from this empirical research [not yet published] is that a primary
motivator is the U.S.
drone strikes. They breed anger, hatred and desperation."

And most certainly, anti-American sentiment.

International law:
Bending it to Fit

The question of whether drone attacks are legal, in letter or
spirit, under international law is a matter of much debate, and the answer
depends on whether the U.S.
can credibly make the case that the strikes are in self-defense, or carried out
with the consent of the government of the targeted country.

According to the authors ofLiving
Under Drones,"The
U.S. government's extreme reluctance to provide details about particular
strikes or the targeted killing program in general has impeded much-needed
democratic debate about the legality and wisdom of U.S. policies and
practices....The U.S. has largely refused to answer basic questions about the
drone program posed in litigation or by civil society, journalists, or public
officials."

There is a growing consensus, however, that the U.S. is on
shaky ground. The attack on the WorldTradeCenter
in September 2001 was too long ago to trigger the self-defense clause, or to
justify our presence in the region. And while Pakistani officials cooperated
initially with the U.S.
drone strikes, domestic outrage has grown so exponentially that they finally
publicly filed a protest with the U.S. Embassy in October.

Whether they are legal or not, perhaps
the most important question is whether drone strikes that cause significant
"collateral damage" aremoral—especially given that they are
used to kill people in countries against which Washington has not even declared
war.

Pam Bailey is a free-lance
writer who travels frequently to Palestine and
other "targets" of U.S.
foreign policy. She was a participant in the CODEPINK delegation to Pakistan, and
blogs at <paminprogress.tumblr.com>.

During a recent visit to the Smithsonian's National Air and SpaceMuseum
in Washington, DC, this writer overheard a father eagerly
directing his young son to the nearby drone exhibit. Pointing to the drones
hanging from the ceiling, the father proudly told his son that "this is
what daddy does at work." I instantly scoffed to myself, thinking,
"why don't you tell your son what those drones do?" Of course (and
appropriately), the man did not explain to his little boy that these machines
are used to covertly and extrajudicially kill suspected terrorists—some of them
American citizens—overseas.

Unfortunately, that child's naïveté is not so different from
that of the American public. While, unlike the child, most adults are aware
that drones are used to kill individuals believed to be terrorists, few
Americans have ever paused to genuinely consider or question the legal, moral
and strategic implications of their government's drone program.

The U.S. has
been carrying out drone strikes against targets in Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen for more than a decade—since
February 2002. In all that time, the White House has not provided clear and
transparent answers to key questions regarding the covert program: How does the
government determine who is targeted by a drone strike? Are drone strikes
really limiting the growth of terrorism? How many innocent civilians have been
killed? What is the legal basis for carrying out a strike in a sovereign
nation's territory? Does the president have the Constitutional authority to
unilaterally conduct a drone war without congressional approval and a
declaration of war? The questions continue to multiply.

Just as the boy in the museum blindly accepted that his dad's
job is "cool," so too do the American people seem to have blindly
accepted drone warfare as an empirical fact of the 21st century. War-weary
Americans seem to have little concern over military operations that do not
directly risk the lives of U.S.
soldiers. Indeed, an October 2012 PewResearchCenter
poll found that 60 percent of Americans believe the U.S.
should immediately remove troops from Afghanistan. However, according to
a June 2012 Pew poll, roughly the same number of respondents—62 percent—approve
of the U.S.
drone campaign.

These polls seem to suggest that drone warfare simply is not
seen by many Americans as a form of war. If unmanned aircraft were terrorizing
their communities and killing their neighbors, it is likely that Americans
would have a vastly different perspective. As Americans upgrade their
technological gadgets this holiday season, perhaps they should also update
their understanding of war. As Pam Bailey outlines on p. 34, drones do indeed
represent a new type of 21st century warfare, a type that Americans must
acknowledge as existing, then fully vet and question before it becomes
institutionalized.

A major reason for the broad American acceptance of killer
drones is that both political parties have largely ignored the drone issue. In
a deeply divided nation, drones seem to be one of the few areas where Democrats
and Republicans are able to agree. Because partisan feuds drive mainstream news
coverage, the lack of disagreement on this issue has resulted in it being the
topic of little discussion in major American media outlets. Speaking at a Nov.
16 congressional briefing organized by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) on the topic
of drones (see p. 63), Bob Naiman, policy director at Just Foreign Policy,
highlighted this phenomenon. "If Congress isn't talking about something,
it's not perceived as controversial," he astutely pointed out.

The bipartisan silence on this issue was on full display at the
Oct. 22 foreign policy presidential debate in Boca Raton, Florida.
When asked by moderator Bob Schieffer to discuss his position on drones, Gov.
Mitt Romney said that he "entirely" supported President Barack
Obama's drone strategy. Not surprisingly, President Obama dodged the question
entirely and instead spoke only vaguely about the Middle
East. Just like that, the presidential candidates of the country's
two major political parties assured the 59.2 million Americans watching that
they need not concern themselves about drones.

President Obama's decision not to answer the drone question at
the debate reflects the approach he has taken to the topic throughout his
presidency. Indeed, he did not publically acknowledge the use of drones in Pakistan until
January 2012. Since then, his administration has promised that the executive
office is working on providing the American people with a clearer understanding
of the drone program. "Staying true to our values as a nation also
includes upholding the transparency upon which our democracy depends,"
said John Brennan, President Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser, in his
April 2012 remarks on the drone program at the WoodrowWilsonInternationalCenter
for Scholars.

Despite talk of greater transparency, however, the
administration officially has released very few details regarding the program
to date. Speaking to CNN's Jessica Yellin in September 2012, President Obama
refused to provide specifics about the program. "I've got to be careful
here. There are classified issues…I can't get too deeply into how these things
work," he told Yellin, while assuring her that drone strikes are carefully
planned and carried out.

What little is known of the U.S. drone
program comes from unnamed sources quoted in newspapers such asThe
New York Times,whose
May 2012 article "Secret 'Kill List' Proves a Test of Obama's Principles
and Will" is the most in-depth overview of the drone program published in
a U.S. paper to date. The fact that details of the drone program have been
leaked seemed to bother the allegedly transparent President Obama, who told
Yellin, "A lot of what you read in the press that purports to be accurate
isn't always accurate."

Aside from the fact that elected officials largely ignore the
issue, another reason the much-needed national dialogue on drones has not taken
place can be attributed to the moral relativism that cripples the minds of many
Americans. To many in this country, people living in Pakistan
and Yemen
are "others," who exist in a strange and "uncivilized" part
of the world. According to this perspective, the deaths of some innocent
civilians in a distant part of the world, while unfortunate, are an acceptable
price to pay to ensure the safety of American civilians. As GeorgetownUniversity
professor John Esposito noted while discussing drones at the Islamic Society of
North America's (ISNA) convention in August, "Life has become cheap."

This idea of the relative value of
lives has been openly discussed in the media. Appearing on MSNBC's Oct. 23
"Morning Joe" program,Timemagazine columnist Joe Klein offered a
disturbing justification of the American drone program. "The bottom
line," he said, "is whose 4-year-old gets killed? What we're doing is
limiting the possibility that 4-year-olds here get killed by indiscriminate
acts of terror." Bottom line: in the U.S., American lives are more
important than the lives of foreigners.

While, to varying extents, each culture has its own
"others"—those who, for whatever reason, are seen as being less
deserving of their rights, not to mention their lives—the notion of
"otherness" is quintessentially un-American. It must be remembered,
however, that Americans, like everyone else in the world, are not inherently
hateful or unsympathetic. Rather, unfortunate events, such as the 9/11 attacks,
or the firing of a drone at a village, can poison human minds and lead
generations to believe and act upon mistruths. The drone program is thus the
result of the pervasive mistruth that the Muslim world is rife with terrorists
who must be killed before they kill us.

While the issue of moral relativism is daunting and difficult to
reverse, it must not be used as an excuse to allow the drone program to
continue unabated. Because most Americans are good-hearted people, it is
essential that they be informed of the realities of drone warfare—particularly
when it comes to the deaths of innocent civilians (which have been
underreported by the Obama administration and the media).

Despite the unfortunate fact that they have mistrustful views of
the Muslim world, the American people as a whole would not support the drone
program if they knew it was claiming the lives of far too many civilians,
allowing al-Qaeda to expand in places like Yemen, and being used 98 percent of
the time to kill low-level insurgents who posed no credible threat to the U.S.
Just Foreign Policy's Naiman is thus likely correct in stating, "If the
American people found out what the real [drone] strategy was, I'm sure they
would not support it."

As President Obama prepares to begin his second term, now is the time for the
American people to demand clear answers about his administration's killer drone program. A new system of warfare
must not become normalized before all the facts have been presented and the
American people have had the opportunity to participate in a national debate.
Drone warfare must not be permitted to proceed unchecked for another four
years.

In April of this year,President Obama approvedthe CIA’s request to begin launching
targeted assassinations in Yemen through drone strikes even when the identities
of those being targeted is not known. The US
government calls these “signature strikes,” and they are being deployed
constantly in both Yemen and
Pakistan.
Drone operators thousands of miles away view people on the ground through a
grainy video feed and identify “suspicious behavior.” And on that basis, the
people are bombed.

Buta new academic paperdescribes signature strikes as
“legally suspect.” Kevin Jon Heller, professor at MelbourneLawSchool, writes in a
forthcoming piece for the Journal of International
Criminal Justicethat the Obama administration
appears to be engaging in the unlawful use of force in many of its signature
strikes.

The drone war has been receiving
renewed focus among academics skeptical of its legality and adherence to human
rights. Astudylast month from the Stanford
and NYU schools of law found that the drone program is “terrorizing” the
civilian population of Pakistan
and that it is having a “counterproductive” impact, effectively creating more
enemies than it eliminates. Another study this
month from Columbia Law School’s Human
Rights Institute found the number of Pakistani civilians killed
in drone strikes are “significantly and consistently underestimated” by
tracking organizations which are trying to take the place of government
estimates on casualties, which the Obama administration won’t comment on
because the drone war is technically secret.

Heller deals primarily with the question of legality under
international law. Broadly speaking, signature strikes are suspect because
international humanitarian law obligates
“[t]hose who plan or decide upon an attack” to
“do everything feasible to verify that the objectives to be attacked
are neither civilians nor civilian objects.” Article
50(1) of the Additional Protols demands that “if there is still ‘doubt’
that an individual is a legitimate target after taking all feasible
precautions, ‘that person shall be considered to be a civilian.’

The many anecdotal instances of
massive civilian casualties in any number of drone strikes throughout the Obama
presidency suggest that these legally mandated precautions were not adhered to;
if no ‘doubt’ remained, we would not seeso many incidents like this.
But Heller tackles specific categories of signature strikes and shows that the
criteria for bombing people in these drone strikes violates the law.

Citing a recentNew York
Timesreport,
among others, that described the administration’s method of counting “all
military-age males in a strike zone as combatants…unless there is explicit
intelligence posthumously proving them innocent,” Heller writes:

That status, however, cannot simply be inferred from the fact that an
individual is of military age and is present in
an area that the CIA chooses to attack. As the ICRC has pointed out, membership
in an organized armed group requires actual and continuous participation in
hostilities; it ‘cannot depend on abstract affiliation, family ties, or other
criteria prone to error, arbitrariness or abuse.

The ‘military-age male’ signature, it is worth noting, is an
unfortunate remnant of the Vietnam war, during which the US government routinely presumed
that any military-age male in a combat zone was a Viet Cong fighter. Colin
Powell openly acknowledged that practice in his autobiography:

“I recall a phrase we used in the field, MAM, for military-age
male. If a helo [helicopter] spotted a peasant in black pajamas who looked
remotely suspicious, a possible MAM, the pilot would circle and fire in front
of him. If he moved, his movement was judged evidence of hostile intent, and
the next burst was not in front but at him. Brutal? Maybe so.”

Powell’s description is echoed – more colorfully – by Lt.
William Calley, the archietct of the infamous 1968 massacre at My Lai:

“[I]f those people weren’t all VC then prove it to me. Show me
that someone helped us and fought the VC. Show me that someone wanted us: one
example only! I didn’t see any… Our task force commander… his star said its a
VC area and everyone there was a VC or a VC sympathizer. And that’s because he
just isn’t yougn enough or old enough to do anything but sympathize.”

The ‘military-age male’ signature is not simply brutal, as
Powell acknowledges. It is also unlawful.

Comparing the Obama administration’s criteria for signature
drone strikes to one of the most notorious war crimes in modern memory is an
extraordinary statement that the media and the political class are simply
ignoring.

Another criteria Heller focuses on
is “consorting with known militants.” The US has been targeting and killing
people they determine through their drone cameras are “consorting” with
“militants,” and going on to stand by these killings as morally and legally
legitimate. Heller says this doesn’t meet the requirements for participating in
hostilities and therefore targeting on this basis is criminal.

At most, then, consorting with known
militants can be considered sympathizing or collaborating with and organized
armed group. Neither activity however makes an individual a lawful target. With
regard to sympathizing, the UN Sub-Commission on Human Rights adopted a
resolution in 1985 that specifically condemned the US-backed El Salvadoran
government’s practice of killing peasants it believed were sympathetic to the
FMLN. According to the Sub-Commission, “as long as the so-called ‘masses’ do
not participate directly in combat, although they may sympathize, accompany,
supply food and live in zones under the control of the insurgents, they
preserve their civilian character, and therefore they must not be subjected to
military attacks.” With regard to collaboration, the Special Court for Sierra Leone
specifically held inFofana and Kondewathat “persons accused of
‘collaborating’ with the government or armed forces would only become
legitimate military targets if they were taking direct part in the hostilities.
Indirectly supporting or failing to resist an attacking force is insufficient
to constitute such participation.

At the very least, the Obama
administration deserves to be investigated for their conduct in the drone war.
Heller doesn’t say all drone strikes are illegal, and he concludes that even
the unlawful strikes “would be difficult to prosecute as war crimes,” because
it’s difficult to prove intent to kill civilians on the part of the Obama
administration. Several high-level officials at the United Nations, however,have speculatedthat war crimes have been committed in
instances where the Obama administration targeted rescuers in follow-up strikes
or funeral attendees – both of whichhave been alleged.

But even putting war crimes prosecution aside, crimes have
clearly been committed. The Obama administration, however, is the most powerful
cabinet in the world. And the powerful don’t typically submit to the law.
Aggressive prosecutions and harsh jail sentences need to be reserved for
pot-smokers and convenient store thieves. The powerful can’t be bothered with
thousands of dead civilians and international laws governing the use of force.

Reprieve delivers
justice and saves lives, from death row to GuantánamoBay.

UN announces an
investigation unit to inquire drone attackson26
October 2012 [Dick: I read this essay
in VFPs The War Crimes Times Winter
2012.

On 25 October 2012, Ben Emmerson QC, the United Nations’
Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights, announced that a
UN investigation unit would be established early next year “to inquire into
individual drone attacks…and other forms of targeted killing conducted in
counter-terrorism operations.” Emmerson and Christof Heynes, the UN Special
Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, are establishing
this body in order to investigate individual drone attacks that are alleged to
have resulted in civilian deaths.

Emmerson noted that since 9/11,
the US
and its allies have used the “global war on terror” to justify military actions
of seemingly limitless reach. Following in the footsteps of the Bush
Administration, the Obama Administration has used the “war on terror” – a war
without geographical boundaries – to justify targeted killings in Pakistan, Somalia,
and Yemen.

While States have an obligation
to protect their own citizens and, therefore, employ effective
counter-terrorism strategies, the Special Rapporteur emphasized that this
obligation does not give States the option to disregard the human rights of
“those accused or suspected of involvement in acts of terrorism” or the
communities in which these individuals reside. A recentreportreleased by Stanford and NYU law
schools demonstrated that US
drone strikepolicies in Pakistan terrorise the entire civilian
population in North Waziristan. These strikes
violate a wide range of human rights: they deprive individuals of their rights
to life, to work, to education, to a cultural life, to self-determination, and
to physical and mental health.

Emmerson also expressed his
opinion that it was “extremely naïve” for the international community to
believe that “that international terrorism in all of its modern forms and
manifestations is capable of being definitively defeated by military means.”
Rather than relying wholly on militaristic means to defeat the global spread of
terrorism, the Special Rapporteur stated that it was essential for a holistic
approach to be adopted that addresses the factors that compel individuals to
resort to terrorist activities. Such an approach requires that human rights and
the rule of law be both respected and protected.

Dennis Kucinich Holds
First Congressional Briefing on Drones

More than a decade after the U.S. launched its secret drone program, Rep.
Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) hosted Congress' first briefing on the matter on Nov. 16
at the RayburnHouseOfficeBuilding.

Kucinich opened the hearing by questioning the
strategic and moral standing of the drone program. "There is increasing
evidence that [drone] strikes cause significant harm to civilian populations
and serve as a powerful recruitment tool for terrorists," he said. The
former presidential candidate also expressed concern that those killed by
drones are being denied due process and "deprived of their human
rights."

Kucinich went on to express his disapproval
that the White House has not allowed Congress to view the legal framework it
uses to justify drone strikes. The drone program is "being carried out
with no transparency, no accountability, and no judicial review," he
charged. Arguing that drones must be subject to the same scrutiny and laws as
other weapons, he said, "We must reject the notion that Congress and the
American people have to be kept in the dark."

Not only is "the use of armed drones in a
sovereign country's territory an act of war," Kucinich pointed out, but
the drone program is "an historical undercutting of Article 1 of the
Constitution." Under Section 8, he explained, Congress—and Congress
alone—has the power to declare war. The drone program thus is "not a small
matter," Kucinich said, and called upon people of all political parties to
become involved in this issue.

[On Nov. 28, Kucinich,
along with Reps. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Rush Holt Jr. (D-NJ), introduced H. Res.
819, which compels the administration to release the documents it uses to
legally justify the use of drones to assassinate individuals—including American
citizens—overseas.]

Stanford Law School Professor James Cavallaro, co-author of the
groundbreaking academic studyLiving Under Drones,highlighted four little-discussed flaws of the drone
program. First, he said, contrary to claims made by the administration,
"drones kill a significant number of civilians." In Pakistan alone,
he noted that between 478 and 885 civilians have been killed since 2004.

Second, Cavallaro pointed out, drones cause
psychological disorders and societal harm in impacted areas. Residents of areas
frequently targeted by drones have high levels of anxiety and suffer from PTSD
and nervous disorders, he noted, adding that many are afraid to gather in
groups and opt to keep their children home from school due to fears of
impending drone strikes.

Third, the fact that first responders have
been killed reacting to drone strikes raises serious legal issues, Cavallaro
said. If these killings are intentional, he added, they would constitute war
crimes.

Finally, Cavallaro warned that drones are
unreliable and counterproductive. Noting that 80 percent of detainees at GuantanamoBay
have been found innocent and released, he asked, "What if the same
proportion holds for those targeted and killed by U.S. drone strikes?" Moreover,
he pointed out, the vast majority of "terrorists" killed have been
low-level insurgents. "Only two percent of those killed were high-level
targets," he noted. Cavallaro concluded by describing drones as
"faceless ambassadors of death," since often they are the only interaction
many communities have with the U.S.

According to Frank Jannuzi, head of Amnesty International's Washington,
DC office, the U.S. is subverting international
human rights laws by citing national security as the reason for drone strikes.
"The administration continues to rely on a global war legal theory that
treats the entire world as a battlefield…on which lethal force may be
apparently used without regard to any human rights standards," he pointed
out.

Medea Benjamin, co-founder of
CODEPINK, reflected on her recent trip to Pakistan (see p. 34). "We
found intense anger over the violation of Pakistan's sovereignty" and
the fact that Pakistani lives are viewed as dispensable, she said.
"Continuing the strikes only exacerbates the problem," she argued,
and allows terrorists to "cast themselves as defenders of the
people."

Benjamin also pointed out that law enforcement
agencies here in the U.S.
are increasingly using drones for a variety of purposes. She urged Americans to
be wary of domestic drone use, warning that "our privacy laws are not
strong enough to ensure that the new technology will be used responsibly and
consistent with democratic values."

Bob Naiman, policy director at
Just Foreign Policy, urged Congress to push the administration to provide
redress to innocent individuals adversely impacted by drone strikes. "This
is something Congress could make happen very easily," he said. A public
redress process would not allow the administration to cover-up civilian deaths,
he explained.